The fourth annual USA Pro Challenge in August lured more than 1 million spectators who stirred a record $130 million in economic impact across Colorado. Here, a couple watch the race in the Garden of the Gods.

Caleb White, 3, of Crested Butte, and his grandfather, Jim, welcome cyclists to the start of Stage 3 of the USA Pro Challenge in Gunnison on Aug. 20.

Nordic Lodge, his hotel in the heart of downtown Steamboat Springs, was sold out every weekend and most weekdays from June through August.

Like most every other hotel in the region, weekends at Nordic Lodge were sold out weeks in advance, allowing Golaszewski and his wife, Izabela, to charge a bit more for rooms. “I’m sure it was our best summer ever,” he said.

Indeed, 2014 will be the new benchmark for summer tourism in Colorado. Lodges saw record occupancy and were able to push room rates higher. And visitors spent more, with nearly every resort community posting record sales-tax revenues in May, June, July and August.

Summer business in the high country exploded on the heels of a record winter, during which ski areas hosted an all-time high of 12.6 million visits .

While the winter tourism season tends to swell in very busy bursts around holidays and spring break weeks, this summer was bustling from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The fourth annual USA Pro Challenge in August again lured more than 1 million spectators who stirred a record $130 million in economic impact in the 10 cities and towns that hosted the weeklong cycling race across Colorado. The 12 percent increase over the 2013 race was fueled by spectators who stayed longer in hotels and spent more along the race route.

At the annual Governor’s Tourism Conference in Westminster last week, Colorado Tourism Office director Al White said the energy was high with expectations that 2014 will surpass previous tourism records set in 2013, when 64.6 million visitors spent an all-time high of $17.3 billion in Colorado. Previous high marks were set in the economic heydays of 2006 and 2007.

“Over 400 attendees and every one — literally — that I talked to indicated that summer was up,” White said. “Most mountain resorts are reporting double- digit increases. There is a lot of buzz about Colorado nationally and internationally. We are topping people’s lists of priority destinations to visit.”

It’s not just mountain vacation traffic that is tracking toward an all-time high. The Colorado Convention Center in Denver is pacing for a record year for business travel. Visit Denver, the city’s convention and tourism bureau, estimates the number of convention delegates visiting the city in 2014 will surpass 422,000, marking a new high point.

While conventions are booked many years in advance, the big meetings in Denver this year — such as the SnowSports Industries America Snow Show and the American Academy of Dermatology gathering — lured more attendees.

Add in solid tourism traffic and Denver’s hotel-room occupancy climbed to 78.2 percent through September, up from 73 percent in the same period in 2013. And those hotels are making more money, with average rates reaching $124.44 in 2014, up from $115.40 in 2013.

That hotel traffic jibes with data collected by DestiMetrics, the Denver organization that tracks lodging occupancy at 19 resorts across the West. From May through August, those mountain resort communities saw record occupancy and revenues with double-digit growth in every month, according to DestiMetrics.

The record-setting momentum is carrying through the fall and into winter, especially for Colorado resorts. DestiMetrics shows bookings for ski vacations through March are up 7.4 percent, with revenue from those months up 15.5 percent. Rocky Mountain resorts are up even higher, while California resorts, which suffered record-low snowfall last winter, are down.

“At this point, we’re seeing skiers and riders taking up right where they left off last year,” DestiMetrics director Ralf Garrison said in a statement announcing the early-season bookings.

Jason Blevins covers tourism, mountain business, skiing and outdoor adventure sports for both the business and sports sections at The Denver Post, which he joined in 1997. He skis, pedals, paddles and occasionally boogies in the hills and is just as inspired by the lively entrepreneurial spirit that permeates Colorado's high country communities as he is by the views.

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